And I am tired,—so tired of rigid duty,

So tired of all my tired hands find to do!

I yearn, I faint, for some of life's free beauty,

Its loose beads with no straight string running through!

Aye, laugh, if laugh you will, at my crude speech;
But women sometimes die of such a greed,-
Die for the small joys held beyond their reach,
And the assurance they have all they need!

Jus porting

AT MY ENEMY'S GATE.

As I passed my enemy's gate
In the summer afternoon,

On my pathway, stealthy as Fate,

Crept a shadow vague and chill: The bright spirit, the rainbow grace Of sweet, hovering thought, gave place To a nameless feeling of loss,

A dark sense of something ill.

Whereupon I said, in my scorn,
'There should grow about his door

"Nothing but thistle and thorn,

"Shrewd nettle, dogwood, and dock;

"Or three-leaved ivy that twines

"

A bleak ledge with poisonous vines,

"And black lichens that incrust

"The scaly crest of a rock!"

Then I looked, and there, on the ground,

Were two lovely children at play;

The door-yard turf all around

Was spotted with daisies and pinks;

642

From his apple-trees showered the notes
Of a dozen ecstatic throats,

And up from the grass-lot below
Came the gossip of bobolinks.

And, behold! like a cloud, overhead,
Flocked a multitude of white doves!
They circled round stable and shed,
Alighting on sill and roof:
All astir in the sun, so white,
All a-murmur with love, the sight
Sent a pang to my softening heart,
An arrow of sweet reproof.

And I thought of our foolish strife, And "How hateful is hate!" I said. "Under all that we see of his life

Is a world we never may know,

With its sorrows, and solace, and dreams;
And even though bad as he seems,

He is as he is for a cause,

And Nature accepts him so.

She gives this foeman of mine

Of the best her bounty affords,

Sends him the rain and the shine,

And children whom doubtless he loves;

She fosters his horses and herds,

And surrounds him with blossoms and birds:

And why am I harder of heart

To his faults than the daisies and doves?

"To me so perverse and unjust,

He has yet in his uncouth shell

Some kernel of good, I will trust,
Though a good I never may see:
And if, for our difference, still
He cherishes grudge and ill-will
The more's the pity for him,-

And what is his hatred to me?"

So for him began in my heart
The doves to murmur and stir,
The pinks and daisies to start,

And make golden afternoon.
And now, in the wintry street,
His frown, if we chance to meet,
Brings back, with my gentler thoughts,
The birds and blossoms of June.

AT SEA.

The night was made for cooling shade, For silence, and for sleep;

And when I was a child, I laid

My hands upon my breast, and pray'd,
And sank to slumbers deep.

Childlike, as then, I lie to-night,
And watch my lonely cabin-light.

Each movement of the swaying lamp Shows how the vessel reels,

And o'er her deck the billows tramp, And all her timbers strain and cramp With every shock she feels;

It starts and shudders, while it burns, And in its hinged socket turns.

Now swinging slow, and slanting low,
It almost level lies:

And yet I know, while to and fro
I watch the seeming pendule go
With restless fall and rise,
The steady shaft is still upright,
Poising its little globe of light.

O hand of God! O lamp of peace!
O promise of my soul!

Though weak and toss'd, and ill at ease
Amid the roar of smiting seas,-

The ship's convulsive roll,—
I own, with love and tender awe,
Yon perfect type of faith and law.

A heavenly trust my spirit calms,-
My soul is fill'd with light;

The ocean sings his solemn psalms;
The wild winds chant; I cross my palms;
Happy, as if to-night,

Under the cottage-roof again,

I heard the soothing summer rain.

MIDSUMMER.

Around this lovely valley rise
The purple hills of Paradise.

O, softly on yon banks of haze
Her rosy face the summer lays!

Becalmed along the azure sky,
The argosies of cloudland lie,
Whose shores, with many a shining rift,
Far off their pearl-white peaks uplift.